Battle Over Leaf Blowers Broadens

By ELSA BRENNER

Published: October 16, 1994

JOSEPH TINELLI, who usually sees green this time of year -- turf green and money green, that is -- is seeing red instead. A landscape contractor in Yonkers for 33 years, he said he is fighting mad about the growing number of municipalities in the county adopting bans on leaf blowers.

"It's like taking away the saw from the carpenter," said Mr. Tinelli, the vice president of the New York Turf and Landscape Association, a Scarsdale-based trade organization representing 300 members in the county. "We are talking about an essential tool."

He asked rhetorically: "What do you do with a circular driveway? Sweep it with a broom?" Then he added, "We're going to have to tell our customers that if they want their properties manicured, it will have to be done by hand and at a price."

Gardeners use gasoline-powered leaf blowers in the fall and spring to clear dead leaves and at other times of the year to blow away grass clippings and debris. Mr. Tinelli predicted that if the blowers continued to be banned during the summer months, and their use sharply curtailed during peak leaf-blowing seasons, landscapers would have to revert to more labor-intensive methods like rakes and other non-powered tools -- and they would have to raise their rates.

Mr. Tinelli, who owns Tinelli Landscape Contractors, said the professional association would try to overturn the leaf-blower bans and had hired several lawyers to study the constitutionality of the ordinances.

But local leaf-blower regulations reflect a national trend, and to date there have been "just threats but no challenges to the law," said Dick Roberts, a lecturer on the subject and founder of Project Quiet Yards in Greenwich.

"What's happening in this part of the country is not unique," Mr. Roberts said.

The movement against leaf blowers began in Beverly Hills, Calif., about five years ago and has since moved across the country. Leaf blowers in that city and some other West Coast communities are banned year round.

In Westchester, landscape contractors are fighting hard to buck the growing tide. Mark Bellantoni, operations manager for Michael Bellantoni Inc., a family-owned landscape business in White Plains, helped organize a march on White Plains City Hall last month to protest a leaf-blower ban there. White Plains, joining other municipalities in the county, this year passed a trial ordinance banning leaf blowers from Aug. 15 through the end of September.

In a Sept. 20 demonstration, about 500 landscapers, gardeners and arborists from Westchester and neighboring counties marched up Main Street in White Plains and demanded an explanation of the law from Mayor Sy J. Schulman. But Mr. Bellantoni said City Hall turned a deaf ear to the landscapers' concerns.

"The Mayor refused to come out and speak to us," Mr. Bellantoni said. "He wouldn't even show respect for our side of the argument."

The Mayor, on the other hand, said he was open to hearing the gardeners' concerns and that he had invited Michael Bellantoni, president of the landscapers' group and the father of Mark Bellantoni, into his office to talk after the march.

Mayor Schulman said that even though his office had been inundated with citizen complaints about noise generated by the leaf blowers, he and the city's Common Council were receptive to both sides' points of view.

"We have never seen such a bipolar outpouring of feelings on an issue," said Mr. Schulman, who described the ongoing debate as "a symptom of modern society."

"This is not an easy issue," he said. "People get excited at both extremes. On the one hand, you have people objecting to the ban on the basis of an imposition of civil liberties. And then you have those who support the ban and think it's the greatest thing ever done by local government for their peace and sanity."

David Kahn, a principal consultant for Acoustic Dimensions -- a noise consulting firm in Mamaroneck -- said municipalities were increasingly addressing "quality-of-life issues like sound and noise."

"We are talking about noise pollution, health concerns, how a body responds to stress," he said. "Going along with the current thinking about what's important in life, citizens are demanding that governments focus on these issues, too."

In Scarsdale, where a ban on leaf blowers during the summer months was adopted earlier this year, the Deputy Village Manager, John N. Crary, said the Village Board was guided by quality-of-life issues.

"The noise is very loud and piercing," Mr. Crary said. "It's very intrusive." The village bans the use of leaf blowers in the summer months and limits hours of operation at other times of the year.

The principal physical injury from a leaf blower is to the operator's hearing, and ear protectors are recommended when using the equipment. Although the noise will not actually damage the hearing of those nearby, it nevertheless can "elicit a physiological response" from those within earshot, Mr. Kahn said. "People sometimes get so upset that they start screaming at their neighbors."

Mr. Roberts of Project Quiet Yards said the noise level of a leaf blower approaches 100 decibels, similar to that of a jet airplane taking off. He observed that sometimes landscapers operate two and three leaf blowers at one time, increasing the level that much more.

While some property owners have supported the landscapers' concerns and contest bans that could result in diminished services or price increases, others who oppose the use of leaf blowers say the time has come to return to a simpler, quieter -- and perhaps more ecologically sound -- life style.

A Larchmont resident, Glynne Woolfenden, who has been lobbying for stronger noise-control measures for several years, recalled that a decade ago "leaves were simply raked."

"Now that has all changed," she said. "People seem to think that every single leaf has to be blown away as though it is some kind of germ. That kind of thinking is so snooty, so manicured."

In Pelham -- where a law was recently passed allowing leaf blowers to be used only during the fall and early spring months -- William D. Tucker Jr., a retired lawyer, said that this summer was the first in more than a decade without the sound of leaf blowers in his neighborhood.

"It was an excellent summer," he said. "I can't tell you what a difference the ordinance has made in our lives. People can talk on their phones, work at home, hear themselves think. One person even said it was the first time in 15 years that he was able to use his porch."

And Mr. Roberts espoused an environmental approach, explaining that grass clippings are blown away primarily for esthetic reasons. Grass clippings add nitrogen to a lawn, he said, questioning why "everybody has to have their property so tidy looking."

In Larchmont, where the use of leaf blowers is limited to certain hours, Mayor Cheryl W. Lewy said that there were more artists, writers, psychologists and business people working at home since the recent recession and that noise-control ordinances should be developed to protect their right to make a living.

Larchmont, which is considering strengthening its ordinances, has also been meeting with members of the landscapers' organization in an attempt to forge a compromise, Mayor Lewy said. Mr. Tinelli, too, said members were eager to find a solution to the standoff. "We have no desire to be unreasonable," he said. "We need to make a living, but we are also willing to cooperate, although as a trade we are dealing with more restrictions than brain surgeons. We have Department of Transportation laws, pesticide regulations, county licensing, local licensing. It gets absurd."

He said the landscapers would consider using only one leaf blower on a property, instead of two or more at a time, and limiting their services to business hours.

Councilwoman Ruth F. Kitchen, a Democrat of New Rochelle, said her city was considering a leaf-blower ordinance, and that it would seek a solution "that was fair to all sides" -- probably a summertime ban and limited use in the fall and early spring.

"We don't have any objection to using the machine for leaves. It's their use on grass and dirt the rest of the year that bothers us," she said.

Mrs. Kitchen also said she would seek a countywide solution to leaf-blower noise because "the piecemeal efforts of the separate municipalities were not enough."

County Legislator George S. Latimer, Democrat of Rye, said, however, that the Board of Legislators did not have the power to implement a countywide ban on leaf blowers. That notwithstanding, the Board recently passed a resolution calling for more Federal noise controls on gardening equipment.

"Congress needs to look at regulating equipment at the point of manufacture," Mr. Latimer said.

Meanwhile in Rye, where city leaders eschewed the legal route, a different approach was being taken to the leaf-blower problem.

The City Council agreed that neighbors should encourage each other to ask their landscapers to cut back on the noise made by leaf blowers.

Or as Councilwoman Rosamond W. Larr, Republican-Conservative, explained it: "We are taking a civilized approach to the problem. The thought is that if I call the police because my neighbors broke the law, do you think I would ever be able to talk to them again? Would we ever be able to live together as neighbors? Working together, we should be able to solve the problem."

Photo: In White Plains, above, and other communities, use of leaf blowers is being restricted. (Susan Harris for The New York Times)